Yes, it is that time again (finally)! Following a long period ofplanning, development, and testing, the Slackware Linux Project is proudto announce the latest stable release of the longest running distributionof the Linux operating system, Slackware version 14.2!

We are sure you'll enjoy the many improvements. We've done our best to bring the latest technology to Slackware while still maintaining the stability and security that you have come to expect. Slackware is well known for its simplicity and the fact that we try to bring software to you in the condition that the authors intended.

Slackware 14.2 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.12.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.14.21 (KDE 4.14.3 withkdelibs-4.14.21) a stable release of the 4.14.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment. These desktops utilize eudev, udisks,and udisks2, and many of the specifications from freedesktop.org whichallow the system administrator to grant use of various hardware devicesaccording to users' group membership so that they will be able to useitems such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that appear like USB storage,portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players, and more, allwithout requiring sudo, the mount or umount command. Just plug and play.Slackware's desktop should be suitable for any level of Linux experience.

There are two kinds of kernels in Slackware. First there are the huge kernels, which contain support for just about every driver in the Linux kernel. These are primarily intended to be used for installation, but there's no real reason that you couldn't continue to run them after you have installed. The other type of kernel is the generic kernel, in which nearly every driver is built as a module. To use a generic kernel you'll need to build an initrd to load your filesystem module and possibly your drive controller or other drivers needed at boot time, configure LILO to load the initrd at boot, and reinstall LILO. See the docs in /boot after installing for more information. Slackware's Linux kernels come in both SMP and non-SMP types now. The SMP kernel supports multiple processors, multi-core CPUs, HyperThreading, and about every other optimization available. In our own testing this kernel has proven to be fast, stable, and reliable. We recommend using the SMP kernel even on single processor machines if it will run on them. Note that onx86_64 (64-bit), all the kernels are SMP capable....

With the release of Slackware 14.2 quickly approaching, the project has released a second (and probably final) release candidate. The new development snapshot, Slackware 14.2 Release Candidate 2, includes a number of kernel fixes as well as an update to the latest version of the Thunderbird e-mail client. "Finally got some fixes we were waiting for in this new kernel. It's been almost a month since 14.2-rc1 so we'll call this Slackware 14.2 Release Candidate 2. Almost there. Get in any last-minute bug reports quickly." This snapshot also features a keyboard layout fix provided by Jean-Philippe Guillemin. The full list of changes can be found in the changelog....